


as innate an emotion as fear

by kickedshins



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, melanie is recovering and i love her so much, post-160, some musings on georgie and the End, sorry for flesh on main some crimes can never be forgiven, the apocalypse hits and wtgfs face it together, upbeat ending even tho it's right after the apocalypse hits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24016303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: Melanie sort of collapses against her. She goes halfway limp, legs buckling at the knees, and Georgie grabs her by the waist to steady her. “You alright?”“No,” Melanie says. She laughs, and it’s a bitter thing, black as night and cold as winter. “No, I don’t think I am.”Georgie keeps her arms wrapped tightly around Melanie’s body. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll become their own thing, apart from this heaving mess of bodies and blood. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll both be unseeable, both be fearless, both be prepared. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll be safe.orThe apocalypse arrives. Melanie and Georgie face it, and they face it together.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 16
Kudos: 46





	as innate an emotion as fear

**Author's Note:**

> man i have not written in like a MONTH sorry for this fic absolutely sucking i just had to write something and i love mel and georgie and haven't written enough about them so here. enjoy

Georgie is brushing her teeth when the apocalypse hits.

The first indication that something isn’t right is that her toothpaste turns to blood in her mouth. She spits it out and stares at it, feeling suddenly more tired than anything else. It’s just a bit of blood. It shouldn’t be that exhausting.

She looks at herself in the mirror. Both of her mouths split into a smile. One set of teeth is still red.

“Georgie?” comes Melanie’s voice from the other room. Georgie wades through the sea of severed fingers in the corridor to get to her, plucking the Admiral out of a few that are merging together. 

“We don’t want to get any skin in your fur, now, do we?” she coos to him. He doesn’t say anything back, as he is a cat, but he does hack up a ball of congealed fat and flesh directly onto the place where her shoulder meets her neck.

Georgie leans against the doorframe, shoulder sinking into the yielding bounce of the flayed muscle that makes up the structure of her flat. “Yes, dear?”

“What in the hell happened?” Melanie’s eyes are blinking rapidly, all five of them, each cloudy and a little red and entirely unseeing. “Why is… eugh, Georgie, what am I sitting on?”

That’s a bit of a dumb question, so Georgie laughs at it. “The couch, Mel.” She walks over to where Melanie’s seated and nudges her over, sitting down atop a particularly thick patch of the dark brown hair that covers royal blue upholstery. It’s quite comfortable. Georgie has the thought that she might like to sink into it forever.

Melanie feels around for her surroundings. Evidently, she’s not fond of the feel of body parts and blood, if her squeamish facial expressions are anything to judge by. “What happened?” she says, voice cracking. “Is it… I thought I was done with all this– Jesus. I don’t  _ know _ .”

“This is how it’s always been,” Georgie says, but then it strikes her that, no, it has not always been like this. Because if Georgie knows one thing, it is that all moments are the same, that the moment she dies will feel exactly like this one, but somehow, that isn’t true any longer. How can it be true if this moment is so dramatically different from five minutes ago? How can it be true if Georgie isn’t going to die?

  
“Huh,” she says, contemplating that idea for a second. She’s not positive it’s a truth, but she’s not positive it isn’t. There’s probably some third answer in between the two that she hasn’t yet touched upon, but that’s not exactly important, because she’s now realizing that she has two mouths, and that she probably shouldn’t have two mouths.

“What does it all look like?”

Georgie considers this. She looks around the flat she’s had for years and sees that it’s covered wall-to-wall in viscera. Blood pours from a crack in the window, like skin’s been split on a person, except the blood isn’t the healthy red of hemoglobin and oxygen. It’s black, thick and sludgy, and Georgie’s pretty sure nothing good could come from her touching it.

She looks at her cat, which is no longer really a cat, but more a sphere of teeth and claws and fur with two beady eyes peering out from what used to be its face. “Bad,” she answers. “It’s… it looks bad. Er. Fleshy. Sorry, that’s not very specific, but I don’t know if you  _ want  _ me to be specific, so—”

Melanie waves a hand. “No. It’s fine. Am I alright?”

  
“You’ve got five eyes, so three new ones. All blind. And I’ve got a new mouth, so, hey, that’s fun.”

“Right,” Melanie says. “Right. What the fuck?”

Georgie sighs. “I don’t know. Do you want me to get on the phone with Jon, or—”

  
“ _No_ ,” Melanie says, voice vicious, face sharp. “It’s his fault. I know it’s his fault. I don’t want it to be his fault, because I want him to not be absolutely awful for once, but I’m positive that this is his fault, and I… Jesus, Georgie,” Melanie says, shoulders slumping. She sounds raw, broken. She sounds like she’s been scraped clean. “I thought I was done with all of this! I thought I was over the spooks and the scares. I thought I could, I don’t know, make a life. With you. With myself. Away from all that, for once.”

Georgie puts her arms around Melanie’s small frame, holding her in close. She presses a kiss to where the natural black of Melanie’s roots fades into bleach-blonde dye. “I know,” she whispers. “It’s going to be okay, though. We don’t know what’s happened. Come. Up, let’s take a look outside, shall we?”

“I mean, I’ll have a bit of trouble with that, but I can give it a go, I suppose.”

“Very funny.”

“Ah, you like it,” Melanie laughs, clutching tight to Georgie’s arm. It’s a bit hard to reach the door, what with the thicket of hands pulling at their ankles, but they manage.

It swings open with the pop of a dislocated shoulder, the crunch of a finger bone smashed to bits. In the hallway, the sight isn’t much better. Her neighbor’s doors, once wood and metal, are now fleshy, decaying scraps of meat, covered with mold and rot. The floor is slippery underfoot. She doesn’t look down. She doesn’t want to know.

“Well,” says Georgie. “Shit.”

“Not any better than inside?”

“Not any better than inside,” she confirms. “Shall we go outside, or do you want to–”

  
“Out,” Melanie says, mouth a firm line. “There’s no other way around it, right? Besides, it’s starting to smell. Bothersomely. Heightened senses now that my sight’s gone, remember? I think it’ll be easier outside.”

It’s not much easier outside. It’s a landscape of flesh and bodyparts as far as Georgie can see. The streets are mouths and teeth and fingers, scratching at her ankles, beckoning her to relinquish her individuality and her humanity and accept her fate as part of this pulsating mass of flesh. The world is tinted a hazy red. Above it all, a massive eye sits, silent and unblinking, in the center of the sky. Georgie can’t look at it for more than a few seconds before she feels the whisper of a memory that she’d rather forget creeping up her spine.

“So,” Melanie says. “We’re screwed?”

  
“Um, yes, pretty royally so,” Georgie agrees.

Melanie sort of collapses against her. She goes halfway limp, legs buckling at the knees, and Georgie grabs her by the waist to steady her. “You alright?”

“No,” Melanie says. She laughs, and it’s a bitter thing, black as night and cold as winter. “No, I don’t think I am.”

Georgie keeps her arms wrapped tightly around Melanie’s body. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll become their own thing, apart from this heaving mess of bodies and blood. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll both be unseeable, both be fearless, both be prepared. Maybe if she holds her close enough they’ll be safe.

“Ha. So,” Melanie says, voice shaky. “Let’s keep walking, then.”

“Really?”

  
“Really. No way to go other than forwards, now, is there? And I fear if we stay here too long we’ll… I don’t know. Become it? I can feel it calling, can’t you? There’s something comforting about the idea that I’m not anything more than anyone else. I’m not special, you know?” She gestures to her face, to her five cloudy eyes. “I did that. I did that to myself, and I’m not special any longer, and that was supposed to be a good thing. If it ends up getting me killed here…”

  
“It won’t,” Georgie promises. “I won’t let it.”

“Do you feel it? Calling?”

“A bit,” Georgie admits. “Not a lot, though. I don’t think this is where I’m supposed to be. And I don’t think it’s where you’re supposed to be, either. Can I tell you why I think that?”

“Go ahead,” Melanie says. She turns inwards to Georgie, standing on her toes and aiming a kiss that should hit Georgie’s cheek but ends up hitting her new second mouth.

“I see a lot of bad stuff happening here. No, no, don’t laugh, we can’t all be statement-givers, now, can we? I’m not exactly aiming for perfect eloquence. Just an explanation. I don’t think we’re supposed to be here because we haven’t become part of it yet. I can see my neighbors, people I’ve known for years, and they’re just… gone. Absolutely beholden to the Flesh. Because that’s what this is, I’m sure. And I don’t know what’s happening, but there’s this giant eye up above us, and something tells me that’s not got a thing to do with this Flesh business. So that’s part of it. We don’t belong here, because there’s more to this than just  _ this _ , and perhaps another aspect of it all is where we’re supposed to be.”

“Don’t tell me I’m to go frolic around in a battlefield, or recreate the time I was shot in the leg by a ghost, or something,” Melanie says. She plays it like a joke, but Georgie can feel her shake in her arms, can sense the fear in her heart. She’s worried there will be no coming back from that.

“I don’t think so,” Georgie says. “I think if that was happening you’d be there already. I can see people who live in completely different parts of town. There’s a barista from the coffee shop near the Institute—you know, the one we’d go to all the time after you got out of work?—and he’s very much part of this whole Flesh business. He’s got– uh, well, it’s not very pleasant to look at, so I’m not going to for any longer, but there are quite a few limbs where there shouldn’t be. And everyone is… wandering? I don’t know. But there’s a look in their eyes. It doesn’t frighten me, but it concerns me.”

Melanie clears her throat and pulls herself from Georgie’s embrace. “Well. Let’s keep going, then, before it starts to frighten  _ me _ .”

Walking through a hellscape of bodies and animal parts and the overwhelming sense that in the end, everyone’s just a piece of meat, is not very fun, but it’s made a bit better by Melanie on her arm and the Admiral at her feet. Even if he is more of a bloated mess of teeth and fur and bleeding sores than an actual cat at this point.

No one pays them any mind. They’re all focused on each other, a mix of hunger and apathy coating their expressions. Georgie’s heard enough from Jon and Melanie to know that this is a thing of cannibalism, of perversion, of mutations of the worst kind. She sees a baby being baptized in a stream of blood and sees its body bitten into and she hears a congregation say  _ amen _ . And though missionaries rush to convert the wanderers to their strange religion of bodies and bone, none approach Georgie and Melanie.

Georgie feels more out of sorts than she has in years. She feels on unstable footing, and not just because the ground has lungs. She feels like she’s missing an anchor, like if Melanie wasn’t there for her to hold, she’d fall forever into a sea of herself and she wouldn’t ever hit the ground. She’s not afraid, of course, and it’s nice to know that that little rule still applies even when all others seem to have fled from this plane of existence, but she’s certainly not herself. She feels disconnected from the feeling of being human, of the constant reminder that’s lived in the back of her brain for years of her impending mortality, of the mortality of others. She feels like there’s a layer of cotton between herself and the rest of the world, like a connection’s been broken that she wasn’t aware even existed.

One minute they’re pressed between oozing bodies and droves of cattle, and the next, it’s all leagues behind them. Time and distance don’t seem to be operating properly, but that’s an issue for later. For now, Georgie’s just glad to be out of there.

Everything’s back to normal, thankfully. Melanie only has two eyes. The Admiral is a cat again. And, after patting her own face frantically, Georgie can confirm that she’s back to one mouth.

“Okay,” Georgie says. “Okay, we’re out, and everything’s sort of just… barren would be the best way to describe it, I think. We’re still in London, yes, but the streets are pretty much empty, and everything looks like it’s been brushed over with grayscale. Plus our extra body parts disappeared. So it’s fine, overall, I suppose. Do you want to pick a direction?”

“Forwards?” Melanie says. She sounds exhausted. “Jesus. Sorry. I don’t know. I’m out of sorts. I really, really thought that this was all in my past. Should have known that couldn’t be the case.”

“There’s a bench here, if you want to take a break. I think it’s fine to sit. Won’t try to eat us, or anything.”

Melanie gives her a pity laugh. “Yeah, sure thing.”

The Admiral curls up in Georgie’s lap, and Melanie rests her head on Georgie’s shoulder, and for a moment, Georgie can pretend that everything is normal. That an hour ago she wasn’t spitting up blood and staring at strangers made of flesh and nothing more, whose heads were filled with matter but not thought.

She presses a kiss to Melanie’s mouth, and Melanie leans up into it, hungry, desperate. She brushes Melanie’s hair to the side with one hand, and with the other, she cups her jaw, brushing a thumb alongside the tendon stretching down her neck. Melanie tugs her closer by the front of her shirt.

At the first bit of wetness against her cheek, Georgie pulls back. “Mel? Babe, are you okay?”

Melanie sniffles, brushing angrily at her face with the sleeve of her oversized What The Ghost? t-shirt that used to belong to Georgie. “Yeah. Yeah, no, I’m fine, I’ll be fine, I’m just… I’m so angry. I’m  _ so  _ angry, and I don’t want to be angry again, because I’m worried that’ll bring back the bad parts of me, but it’s my natural state, I think. To be angry. On edge. And it’s easy to slip back into, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I want to hurt someone, and that scares me. And it should scare you, too,” Melanie says, accusatory.

“Well, it doesn’t,” Georgie responds, raising an eyebrow. “And even if I could feel fear it wouldn’t scare me. I trust you, Melanie King. With my heart. With the keys to my home. With my life, even, and I know you won’t break the things you’ve been entrusted with. I also know that recovery is a rocky path, and I know that anger’s as innate an emotion as fear. You’re not just going to stop feeling it overnight.”

Melanie sighs. “I don’t… Look, Georgie, I believe you. Sort of. I want to, because you mean a lot to me, and I’ve been making an effort to put stock in the opinions of people who aren’t myself when it comes to what’s good for me, because I have had a bit of an issue with that. So I’m going to accept that. All that. What you said. Sure. I’m going to, eventually, and maybe I don’t right now, but I will.”

“And that’s what matters. Is that you will, and that you’re trying.”

The wind picks up, blowing Melanie’s hair across her face. It sticks to tear tracks and chapstick that Georgie knows tastes like mint. Melanie kisses Georgie again, softer, slower. Melanie kisses Georgie and Georgie feels her feelings pouring out of her in a torrent of hurt and hope. Not for the future of the world, which seems to be looking pretty grim right about now, but hope for herself. Hope that she’ll get better.

When Melanie pulls away this time, she’s smiling. “You sure know how to make a girl feel happier.”

Georgie laughs, loud and clear, because she can. There’s not really many people around to hear it. “I try my hardest.”

“Do you want to keep going?”

“Do  _ you _ ?”

Melanie nods. She’s firm and resolute, and her jaw is set. There’s a fire in her damaged eyes that could set an ocean alight. “I do. I don’t know where we’re going, but I know I want to get there.”

Georgie stands and stretches, taking in lungfuls of air not tinged by the rancid taste of decaying meat. There’s something else on the air, too, something dry and old, something of bone and earth and cold stone. She doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it calls to her in a way the land of the Flesh did not. It tells her that she can find that connection again there, that missed sense that aches within her. In science class in university she learned about phantom pains and phantom limbs, and this is what she’d imagine the pangs of a phantom heart might feel like. 

“I want to find my footing again,” Georgie says.

“Okay. What?”

  
“I feel disconnected. I’m not sure why, or what that means, exactly, but I don’t feel whole, and I think I can find a place that’ll make me feel whole.”

“Oh.” Melanie frowns. “Is there anything I can do to help?” 

“No, I don’t think so. This is about… all this. The whole, you know, cosmic horror thing, and my experience with it. I don’t know the details of where we’re heading, but I know I’m supposed to be there.”

Melanie chews at her lip. The eye up above stares down at them, and though Georgie can feel its gaze, she isn’t very bothered by it. “Do I have a place like that? I mean, even if I’m not supposed to be with the Slaughter, is there another land that wants me?”

“Do you think there is?” Georgie asks. “I’m not trying to be cute; I genuinely am asking. I don’t know if there is. I think you’d know. I think you’d feel it.”

Melanie closes her eyes and breathes out slowly. Her hands clench into fists at her side and then relax, and she rolls her shoulders down and back. After a moment, she opens her eyes, and says, “No, I don’t think there is.”

“So you did escape.”

“Ha. Well. No, I didn’t, because this new world is kind of hell, and hell is here despite the fact that I quite literally blinded myself to escape it. But if you mean that I escaped the Slaughter, then, yes, I think I did.”

Georgie says, “There’s a giant eyeball in the sky, by the way.”

Melanie says, “Fucking fantastic. I assume it means something that I wasn’t innately aware of that?”

Georgie says, “I think you escaped the Eye, too. Permenantly.”

Melanie says, “Fucking fantastic,” but this time she means it. She smiles wide, wider than Georgie’s seen her smile in quite some time, and pulls Georgie in for another quick kiss. “Well, then,” she says. “Lead the way.” 

Georgie scoops the Admiral into her arms and pets him, scratching behind his ears. He purrs, and Melanie laughs, and despite it all, Georgie feels alright.

“Let’s go,” she says.

They begin to walk.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated :-) come find me @ commaperson on twitter !


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